Исай Лукодьянов - The Black Pillar

"I shall say that the elementary rules of safety require extreme caution." Stamm undid another button.

"And you, McPherson? Why are you silent, for heavens' sake?"

"It can be tried," said Will, turning his_ eyes away. "Maybe we can get hold of a little bit for analysis."

"And who will answer for it, if…?"

"As far as I can make out, you're not sending them, Bramulla. They've volunteered themselves."

And Bramulla yielded.

"Try, Senor Kravtsov," he said, raising his eyebrows in agony. "Try. But, please I beg you, be careful."

"I'll be extremely careful." Kravtsov, quite cheerful again, made off to the storeroom.

Behind him went Ali-Ovsad.

"Ai balam! Where are you off to?"

"I'm going to cut the pillar!"

"I'll go with you."

The driller watched Kravtsov throwing protective clothing and instruments all over the shelves of the store, and started droning in a sing-song voice, "You're still you-ou-oung. You've no mum or dad he-eee-re. No union he-e-e-re. Only Ali-Ovsad to look after you he-ee-ere."

Five men in heat-resistant suits walked slowly towards the centre of the rig. The stiff glasscloth puckered and crackled like tin. As they went, they pushed a truck with the photo quantum apparatus before them: and the truck rolled meekly along the rails. Kravtsov stared fixedly at the approaching pillar through the glass of his air-tight helmet.

"I don't care if its temperature is three hundred degrees, or even five hundred," he reflected. "I don't suppose it's higher-the mass of water it's pushing its way through must be cooling it a lot. Of course the photoquantum ray must work. It absolutely must. It could be cut through, perhaps. No, we mustn't-we don't know where it would fall. But we shall be able to cut a bit off."

Near the pillar the ripped plates of the deck were bent and heaved under their feet. Kravtsov signed to his companions to stop. Spellbound they watched the dull rushing black surface. Now the pillar narrowed, and a gap formed round it into which a man could easily fall; now it swelled out and, gripping the jagged edges of the deck, forced them upward with a grinding noise.

"Set it up," said Kravtsov, and the laryngo-phone pressed against his throat carried his voice to the helmetophones of his companions.

Chulkov, Jim Parkinson, and the tall Romanian, whose name was Gheorghi, removed a coil of wire from the truck, uncoiled the hoses of the water-coolers, and pulled them to a stanchion. Then they cautiously went another ten metres or so closer to the pillar, set up the firing stand on a tripod, and attached wires.

Kravtsov took up a position at the control panel of the ruby concentrator.

"Watch it! I'm switching on," he cried.

The instruments indicated that the ray gun had emitted a thin invisible ray of light of enormously concentrated power.

But the pillar continued to rush upward; its black fused surface was invulnerable-only the clouds of steam became denser.

Kravtsov ran to the riggers, seized the manual controls of the ray gun and directed it obliquely at the pillar. The black substance did not yield. It was as though the ray sank into it or… was bent.

"Let's try to get a bit nearer, sir," said Jim.

Kravtsov switched the apparatus off. "Move it forward," he cried. "A metre."

"Not too near," said Ali-Ovsad.

The riggers dragged the tripod nearer the pillar. The deck was heaving under them. Suddenly Chulkov, who was standing in front of the others, shouted and staggered with arms outspread, toward the ragged edge of the borehole, making straight for the pillar. Jim rushed after him and grabbed him from behind with both arms. For a few moments they swayed in an odd way as though on a tight-rope; but Gheorghi came up and got hold of Jim, and Kravtsov of Gheorghi, while Ali-Ovsad held on to Kravtsov, like in a children's game. They pulled Chulkov back, and he dropped down on the deck and sat with his legs doubled up under him, unable to stand.

They all stared at him in silence. Then Ali-Ovsad's voice rang out: "Did you have to? Have you forgotten the safety rules? Is that what I taught you? Why did you go near the pillar?"

"I didn't go," said Chulkov hoarsely. "It pulled me."

"Go and have a rest," said the old driller; and, turning to Kravtsov, he said, "you can't joke with this pillar."

He tried to persuade Kravtsov to stop the work and return to the side of the rig, but Kravtsov refused. The riggers pulled the apparatus back a little way, and once again the invisible sword slashed at the pillar and sank in it.

How unwilling Kravtsov was to retreat! But there was nothing to be done. They loaded the apparatus back on the truck again and returned. Chulkov's legs were still trembling and Kravtsov made him get on the truck.

"Nothing doing?" asked Will, when Kravtsov had rid himself of his crackling safety suit.

Kravtsov shook his head.

The top of the black pillar was lost in the clouds, and quite indiscernable. Its base was wreathed in steam and a cloud of humid vapour hung over the rig; the air was suffocating. The men on board were exhausted by the heat and closeness.

Ali-Ovsad stood this hellish microclimate better than the others, but he admitted that even in the Persian Gulf it was not so hot.

"Do I speak true, Englishman?" he asked Will, with whom he had drilled off-shore wells there many years before.

"True," confirmed Will.

"Don't you want to drink tea? It's good to drink tea for heat."

"No, I don't."

"It's moving very fast." Ali-Ovsad clucked his tongue as he watched the racing pillar. "The stratal pressure is very high. It's squeezing the iron out like toothpaste from a tube."

"Toothpaste?" repeated Will. "Aye, that's right. A very good comparison."

Half-naked, and puffing and blowing noisily, Bramulla came out of the radio cabin. He had a wet towel round his head and his great belly was quivering. He was followed by Stamm, who was now without his jacket and was obviously ill at ease in this extraordinary costume.

"Well?" said Will. "Where's the Tukuoka'?"

"It's coming! It'll be here by evening! We'll all evaporate before evening! Bear in mind, Stamm, you'll evaporate before me. Your mass is less than mine. I'll only have begun to evaporate when you've already turned into cloud."

"A cloud in trousers," muttered Kravtsov, who was lying in a deckchair by the cabin door.

"The President of IGY, Academician Tokunaga, is on the 'Fukuoka'," Bramulla announced. "And Academician Morozov as well. And Academician Bernstein from the States is flying here. But by the time they all arrive, we'll have evaporated! Never met with such a case in all my experience. I've observed more erupting volcanoes, Stamm, than you've ever dreamed of, but 1 tell you, this is the first time I've ever found myself in such a hell of a mess."

"We have all in it for the first time," said Stamm, correcting him.

"Bramulian," said Ali-Ovsad. "Let's go drink tea. Tea is very good for the heat."

"What? What did he say?"

Will translated the driller's suggestion. "Senores, I've never drunk tea!" cried Bramulla. "How can you take hot tea in your mouth- it's ghastly! But really, does it help?"

"Come, see for yourself." Ali-Ovsad took the Chilean to his cabin. Stamm watched them go disapprovingly.

Will dropped heavily into a deckchair beside Kravtsov and, for the thousandth time, trained his binoculars on the black pillar.

"I think it's bending," said Will. "It's bending towards the west. Look, laddie."

Kravtsov took the binoculars and stared at the pillar for a long time. "Monstrous, inexplicable solidity," he thought. "What is that substance? Oh! If we could only get a bit of it."

"A cumulative shell," he said. "Do you think a cumulative shell would have any effect on it, Will?"